to his so that they bumped together with every step. After a block or so her head nestled against his shoulder and remained there for the rest of the walk. The fluffy blond hair brushed against his cheek.

The cheek wasn’t numb anymore.

It was cold out but he didn’t notice the cold. It was windy, but he didn’t feel the wind cut through the tight blue jeans and the flannel shirt. She had lied slightly: it was a long walk to her place, but he didn’t even notice the distance.

She lived by herself in a little shack, a tossed-together affair of unpainted planks with nails knocked in crudely. Somebody had tried to get a garden growing in front but the few plants were all dead now and the weeds overran the small patch. He knew, seeing the shack, why she had fixed on the idea of him being lonely. She was so obviously alone, living off by herself and away from the rest of the world.

Inside, she closed and bolted the door and turned to him, her eyes expectant and her mouth waiting to be kissed. He closed his eyes briefly. Maybe he could open them and discover that she wasn’t there at all, that he was back at the bar by himself or maybe out cold in his own cabin.

But she was still there when he opened his eyes. She was still standing close to him, her mouth puckered and her eyes vaguely puzzled.

“I’ll make you happy.” She said those four words as if they were the answer to every question in the universe, and by this time he thought that perhaps they were.

There was no other answer.

He clenched his teeth again, just as he had done when she squirmed before him on the barstool. Then he drove one fist into her stomach and watched her double up in pain, the physical pain of the blow more than matched by the hurt and confusion in her eyes.

He struck her again, a harsh slap on the side of her face that sent her reeling. She started to fall and he brought his knee up, catching her on the jaw and breaking several of her teeth. He hauled her to her feet and the sweater ripped away like tissue paper.

She was right. It was all her underneath.

The next slap started her crying. The one after that knocked the wind out of her and stopped her tears for the time being. His fingers ripped at the skirt and one of his nails dug at her skin, drawing blood. She crumpled to the floor, her whole body shaking with terror and pain, and he fell upon her greedily.

The bitch, he thought. The stupid little bitch.

Couldn’t she guess there was only one way to make him happy?

THE DOPE

I’M NOT VERY BRIGHT. I’ve never been very smart, and even if I am four years older than Charlie, he’s smarter than I am. It’s been that way ever since I can remember. When we went to school, I was just one grade ahead of him. He skipped once and I flunked twice, because he’s almost as much of a smart guy as I’m a dope. It used to bother the hell out of me, but I got used to it.

Then we both quit after a couple years of high school, and me and Charlie were a team. It was just the two of us. Charlie and Ben, the brains and the brawn. That’s the way Charlie used to talk about it. I was lots bigger than him and stronger, but he had a brain like a genius. Let me tell you, we were a team.

Did he have a brain! That’s what I used to call him—The Brain. And he used to call me The Muscle, ’cause I was so strong. Except when I did something stupid he would call me The Dope. He would be kidding when he said it, and he never did it when anyone was around, so I didn’t mind too much.

We had it good—just me and Charlie, just the two of us. We didn’t stick around at home ’cause the folks were giving us a hard time ever since we left school. They wanted Charlie to graduate from Erasmus and go to college and be a doctor, but Charlie said the only college he’d ever get to was Sing Sing and he was in no hurry to get there. So we got the hell out of Brooklyn and took a room a ways